


i don't wanna love somebody else

by fleuriste



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Pining, might make you cry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleuriste/pseuds/fleuriste
Summary: When Iwaizumi Hajime turns six, he’s gifted with a magic ball of string that turns back time, The catch, however, is that the string is literally your life on the line and your days get shorter with every cut.He’s warned not to cut it under any circumstances, unless it’s really really worth it, but then he meets Oikawa Tooru.





	i don't wanna love somebody else

**Author's Note:**

> Whoooooo, first fic on here!! This first chapter is a little short because I feel like it's more an intro than anything, but hopefully it's still interesting. (Also please excuse any tiny grammatical errors and the such, I haven't found a beta for it yet!) I've just been in love with this concept (and Iwaoi) for awhile now, let's hope I do it justice eeeek *cracks knuckles* 
> 
> Work title from the song of the same name by A Great Big World, chapter title from The Call by Regina Spektor.

Iwaizumi Hajime is born on a freezing day in the dead of summer, sleet beating down on all the rooftops and the air thick with apprehension. A day like this is unnatural, everyone says. A baby born on a day like this is unnatural. 

And yet everything seems fine, for a while. He experiences no lack of love and grows in that astonishing way toddlers often do, crawling one night and running the next morning. The world seems endlessly expansive to him, ripe with opportunity and adventure, although Hajime isn't really one to go seek adventure on his own. He likes collecting bugs in the backyard, sure, and follows when the other neighborhood children yell, “Hajime-kun, we’re going swimming!”, but according to the stories his mother reads with him, heroes came in pairs and he has only himself. He isn't exactly lonely, but something is missing. 

On his sixth birthday, Hajime celebrates with his family over a modest matcha chocolate cake, and he wishes for a best friend. That same night, he gets a visitor. 

He crawls under the thin quilt on his bed, tired but not quite ready for the day to end. The night is humid and slightly sticky, but the light breeze floating in from the open window is comforting and he can hear the cicadas’ song.

“Happy birthday, Hajime,” an unfamiliar voice says quietly, and his eyes fly open. 

There’s a silver-haired boy sitting by the foot of his bed, face illuminated by moonlight. He can’t be much older than Hajime, judging by his stature, but there’s something strange about him. He’s never seen a boy his age look so sad. 

Hajime stares at him suspiciously for a moment, wondering who he is, why he knows it’s his birthday and how he got in his room at this hour, but then he says, tentatively, “Are you supposed to be my best friend?”

The boy laughs, shaking his head. “Of all questions. No, not exactly, although you’ll meet him soon enough. I guess I am supposed to be a friend, however, if you can call it that.” 

“I’m very confused,” Hajime says honestly, and the boy smiles. 

“I’m… your guardian angel. Of sorts. Most people don’t get to meet theirs, if they even have one, and you won’t get to see me too much, but I’m here, for all that means. And I have a gift.”

He pulls out a red velvet box about the size of a tennis ball and hands it to Hajime, who’s still somewhat disorientated. Guardian angels are good, right? He thinks he’d be happy about it under different circumstances, but as of right now, he’s sure there’s more to the story. Because while the silver-haired boy seems relatively fond of him, he also looks like he wishes he could be anywhere else but here. 

Hajime opens the box, and nestled inside is a small ball of glowing, iridescent blue string. He looks up at the boy questionably, and something indescribable passes across the boy’s face for just a second, then disappears. 

“It’s no ordinary ball of string, Hajime. There’s a secret power within it, and while I can’t tell you what it does right now, you must protect it dearly. Don’t ever leave it anywhere it might be in danger, don’t tell anyone about it, and never, _never_ cut it. Promise me.” 

Everything about this seems like a prank. The ball of string is pretty and glowing, which is unusual, but it’s hard to believe there’s anything else special about it. It seems like he could find something similar in his mother’s knitting basket, if he wanted. And while the boy seems to have appeared in thin air, his window is open and the boy is small; he could’ve slipped in when Hajime wasn’t looking. Hajime is a natural-born skeptic. He knows things like this don’t happen to most people. 

But he’s also good at reading people, and something about the boy tells him he’s telling the truth. Besides, if this boy really is his guardian angel, offending him would probably not be a good idea.

So he looks the boy in the eye, says “okay,” and tucks the box carefully in his bedside drawer. The boy blinks as if surprised by his complacency.

“Do you have a name or something?” Hajime asks. 

“You can call me Suga.”

“Aren’t you a little too young to be a guardian angel, Suga?”

He smiles a little bashfully. “I’m almost two thousand years old,” he says, and Hajime decides not to question it. 

Suga gets up and stretches languidly. “I should let you sleep. I’ll see you again in a few years, I think. Don’t forget what I said, Hajime.”

“I won’t,” he promises, and yawns, suddenly exhausted. “Goodbye, Suga-san,” he murmurs, eyes drifting closed, and he hears Suga giggle at the honorific.

He also hears something else before sleep overtakes him— Suga, in a voice so quiet Hajime thinks he imagined it— _“I’m so sorry for the gift.”_

 

~~~~~

 

A week after Suga visits him, a moving van backs into the driveway of the recently vacated house next door. Hajime peeks out his window to get a look at the new neighbors, but all he sees is a whole lot of boxes and no people. After a good twenty minutes of this, he dozes off on the windowsill. 

The sound of yelling jolts him awake. 

“Go away, _nee-chan_ , this is my room now!” Hajime hears, and he looks up to see a boy running around the room opposite his in the neighboring house, swatting at someone with a giant inflatable alien toy. 

“Don’t be a brat, Tooru,” says a girl’s voice, irritated. Hajime attempts to get a better look at the boy, but honestly, it’s all a blur because he just _won’t stop moving_. 

Suddenly he turns and stares at Hajime, and Hajime stares back. The boy has ruffled chestnut hair sticking up in all directions and chocolate smeared on his face, and a little corner of Hajime’s mind notes that his eyes are sort of pretty. 

“Hihi!” The boy’s face splits into a wide grin and he waves maniacally. “I’m Oikawa Tooru, what’s your name?”

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” he replies, slightly stunned. _Does this boy have a single shy bone in his body?_ he wonders.

“Oh, hello, Iwa-chan! Please come help me unpack!” And then he disappears before Hajime can respond. 

(It’s the first time Iwaizumi Hajime can’t say no to Oikawa Tooru, and it certainly isn’t the last.) 

 

~~~~~

 

Days stretch into months that grow into years, and the ball of string is left untouched and relatively forgotten. Eight whole years pass by in which many things change, the main ones being that Hajime now goes by Iwaizumi and has grown ( _surprisingly_ , he thinks) into the kind of boy who gets a respectable heap of notes and gifts on Valentine’s Day. 

But no one gets as many as Oikawa.

Iwaizumi had figured out what Suga had meant by “you’ll meet your best friend soon” within a week of spending time with Oikawa, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Iwaizumi’s always the first to acknowledge that Oikawa has a shitty personality, but also the first to punch whoever dares to say it as an insult. 

Because although Oikawa seems like the textbook definition of pompous and self-assured, Iwaizumi knows he’s actually one of the most insecure people on the planet. Oikawa’s insecurity isn’t something written on his face, it’s the kind of thing that shows itself through the walk home, bubbling chatter fizzing into thin air. Oikawa will talk incessantly about the weather, the volleyball game on tv last night, the buy-one-get-one ramune drink sale at the local convenience store, and then as soon as Hanamaki and Matsukawa leave, it all stops. 

“Can I sleep over, Iwa-chan?” Eight-year-old Oikawa would say with a small voice. Teenage Oikawa just trails silently behind Iwaizumi all the way home. While Oikawa greets Iwaizumi’s mother and takes a shower, Iwaizumi sets out the extra toothbrush, clean clothes, and the air mattress. Nonetheless, Iwaizumi only sleeps on the left side of his bed because Oikawa has a tendency to magically appear on the right side the next morning. 

Oikawa finds the ball of string one morning and that’s when Iwaizumi remembers its existence. 

“I swear you must’ve stolen my watch,” Oikawa insists, rooting around in Iwaizumi’s bedside drawer. “Naughty Iwa-chan, always taking my nice things!”

“ _You_ take _my_ nice things, not the other way around! No one wants your crappy watch,” Iwaizumi retorts from the closet. Strangely enough, he can’t find his favorite hoodie. 

“Mean! _I_ want my crappy watch, and it’s not even—” he stops. “Wait, what’s this?”

Iwaizumi looks up to see Oikawa staring curiously at the ball of string. It’s still nestled safely in its box and still the same shade of cerulean, although it isn’t glowing. Maybe it’s a nighttime thing, but Iwaizumi’s glad it isn’t. It would be pretty hard to explain a glowing ball of string.

“Oh, that. That’s…” For a second Iwaizumi’s almost tempted to tell him the truth. Oikawa believes in aliens, there’s no way he would doubt his story. But then he remembers Suga’s warning, and his mind backtracks. “That’s _okaasan’s_.”

Oikawa takes it out of the box and holds it up to the light. “Why is it in such a nice box? Pretty, though. Matches my eyes.” He flutters his eyelashes. 

“Your eyes are brown, Idiotkawa,” Iwaizumi means to say, but then Oikawa twirls a small piece of the string around his finger and Iwaizumi literally stops breathing. 

It feels like there are hands around his neck. Iwaizumi claws at the air around him, feeling for something to release the chokehold, but his fingers clutch at air and nothing else. After about ten more seconds, his vision goes blurry, his heartbeat starts pounding in his ears, and unable to withstand the lack of oxygen, he falls over. 

He feels his head thud on the carpet and vaguely hears Oikawa’s panicked “Iwa-chan!” And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it stops. Oxygen slowly fills his lungs again, and he refocuses on his surroundings to find his head cradled in Oikawa’s lap, the latter’s eyes wide with worry. 

“What was that?” Oikawa asks, a waver in his voice. “You were gasping and your face was deathly pale. I thought…” 

“I don’t know,” Iwaizumi croaks. “My head hurts.”

“Well, you did hit your head.” Oikawa grins. “Man, if your thick skull isn't even good for withstanding trauma, what good is it for?” 

“I… hate… you.”

“Sure, sure. Don’t go dying on me, Iwa-chan. If you die, you don’t get to marry me. I thought that velvet box was an engagement ring for a second! Truthfully, I’m disappointed it’s just a boring ball of string.” 

_A boring ball of string_ … everything had begun when Oikawa unraveled the string. 

“Like I’d want to marry you, Assikawa,” Iwaizumi wheezes, and Oikawa laughs, a lovely tinkling sound that makes the pain subside a little. 

 

~~~~~

 

That night Iwaizumi waits for Oikawa to go home before picking up the ball of string from where Oikawa had dropped it. He stares at it for a good ten minutes, then takes a deep breath.

“Suga-san… I don’t know if you can hear me or if you’re even there, but… the string. I need an explanation.” 

Five minutes later, Suga materializes in front of him in a shimmer of silver light. 

Suga’s appearance has changed. He’s now a teenaged version of the boy Iwaizumi had met years ago, although the silver hair and beauty mark are still there. If Iwaizumi’s honest, he’d be utterly gorgeous if not for the stormy look in his eyes. 

“I thought I told you to put it somewhere safe,” he says, and Iwaizumi bristles. 

“The drawer was safe! It’s not like I touched it either, all this time.”

“You forgot about it,” Suga says blandly. “You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“I don’t even know what happened. One second Oikawa was playing with the string and the next I couldn’t breathe. It was the most horrible feeling.” Iwaizumi scrubs his face with his palms. “I deserve some kind of explanation, Suga. You’re right. I could’ve died today.” 

Suga stares at him for a moment. Then he sighs and sits down by the foot of Iwaizumi’s bed. 

“That ball of string… I said before that it was a gift. Which it is. The string gives you the power to turn back time. A single loop around your finger equates a minute undone. The process is easy, snip off the desired length and it’ll be like the time had never passed— to everyone except you, of course.” Suga looks up at Iwaizumi. “But there’s a price.”

Iwaizumi keeps his face placid, but his heart starts thudding erratically. 

“The string… The string is your life force, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi feels like the room is spinning.

“For every minute you undo, you lose a minute of every day— twenty four hours becomes twenty three hours and fifty-nine minutes. One minute may not seem like a lot, but the minutes turn into years. And if you decide to undo an hour… it adds up, Hajime. And not only will you lose time, but your health gets worse as well.”

“But I can choose not to cut it, right?” Iwaizumi says, desperate. “If I leave it untouched, it’ll be like I never had it?”

Suga shrugs, smiling sadly. “Sure. But… would you really be able to leave it alone if you felt it was important?”

_Would you really be able to leave it alone if he was involved?_ Suga seems to be asking.

Iwaizumi doesn't answer. 

They sit together in companionable silence for a while after that, the crickets chirping softly outside. Iwaizumi contemplates burying the string in some deep, dark corner he can never reach, but he knows Suga’s right. If there really is a situation that calls for it, he needs the string. A small corner of his mind wonders if Oikawa’s still awake, and if he is, what he's doing. 

Suga looks over at him. “I have to get back soon.” 

“Okay.”

A beat of silence. Then, “I'm sorry. I didn't choose this for you.”

“I figured you didn't. You said ‘I'm sorry for the gift’ the last time you came.” 

Suga startles a little. “I thought you were already asleep. And you remember that, after all this time?” 

Iwaizumi shrugs, feels a corner of his mouth tilt up despite himself. “You’re pretty memorable, Suga-san.” 

Suga chuckles, and Iwaizumi notes that for the first time since he's come in, Suga looks at ease. “Please be careful, Hajime-kun. Make sure he's worth it.” 

Then he's gone, and Iwaizumi is left holding his life in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Hopefully the next update will come soon, and please feed your local starving writer with comments/kudos if you enjoyed :3


End file.
